


what doesn't kill you

by mako_lies (wingeddserpent)



Series: The Ruin [16]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Background Aranea/Iris, Gen, Grace Amicitia, Implied Cor/Grace, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Tattoos, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 07:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14183517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/mako_lies
Summary: Iris shows off her ink and gets to the bottom of that secret Mom's been keeping. Mostly, though, they drink wine.





	what doesn't kill you

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: 'tattoos' at amicitias-week.

The door is unlocked. Again. Heartbeat surrounded-by-hobogoblins fast, Iris rushes into her mother’s Lestallum apartment with ready fists. Mom and her ‘no-locks’ thing. She’d only won the City election by like 2%, and there’s still unrest as they dismantle the state-blocs.

Lestallum is filled to busting with angry, scared, and stupid people, desperate and divided people. Any change could spark violence.

Yet calm as can be, Mom is sitting at her desk. Reading. Her glasses perched severely on her regal nose. Bright amber eyes scouring the handwritten reports. Her long, curly hair is pulled out of her face, and there are new strands of silver coiled tightly with the inky black. New wrinkles across her high forehead. No makeup except winged black eyeliner and bright red lipstick. Her warm brown skin somehow still lustrous, despite the lack of sunlight. Everybody in the world is washed out. 

Mom is perfect as ever.

“What have we told you about locking your door?” Iris leans in the doorway, arms folded. Her clothes rub like steel wool against her wings.  “It’s dangerous.”

Her mom jerks. Where is her composure? Composure that she’d taught her children so adamantly. _Part of your duties, as Shields, is to stand in the Senate Chamber. You will hold yourself well._

She fixes Iris with one of her patented-over-the-glasses stares. “A pleasure to see you, Iris. I was wondering when you were going to pay your old mother a visit. Is your girl with you?”

Wow, isn’t the ceiling interesting.

There’s this particularly fascinating patch of water damage that enraptures Iris. Her relationship with Aranea is new enough she hasn’t really discussed it with Mom, plus she’s been busy. Fighting daemons and combing Insomnia for anything useful. Searching for any survivors that fell through the cracks. (But, it’s just more bodies and more daemons.) “Not today. She’s got some errands to run in the old Niff bloc. Anyway, I just wanted to check in. Make sure the new title was fitting okay. You know.”

Mom folds her glasses. Something seems off—some stiffness or discomfort in her mother that Iris can’t recall noticing before. “Thank you, darling. Of course I’m settling in fine. Some growing pains, but really that’s to be expected. Wine?”

Where she gets her supply—no one knows. Maybe being the Mayor of United Lestallum has its perks. It has to have a least one, right? “Sure,” Iris says, and flops onto the couch. Hisses—her newly inked feathers yowling in hot, aching protest—and Mom looms over her. “Mom?” she asks, dazed, the pain fading even as her confusion grows.

Mom is always immaculate. So perfect and calculated in her every reaction. But now—her face is ashen, and her breathing choppy. She clasps Iris’s face in her wrinkled, trembling hands. “Iris, are you injured?” A sharp urgency in her low voice.

...Just motherly concern, which in this raw form is unusual, but not unprecedented. Iris can breathe again. Her mother’s terror is worse than any daemon, leaves a sharper chill in her spine. A sharp reminder that she’s the only member of their family who can’t fight.

Well, not in the physical sense. A stronger woman in the senate chamber or courtroom or podium or whatever, Iris doesn’t know.

“I’m fine. Just got more of my wings filled in. Wanna see?” 

That earns a relieved laugh and a murmured offering to the Tidemother. “After I’ve had more wine. You’re trying to give your mother a heart attack. I could have you arrested for trying to kill me, you know,” she teases, that easy melody back in her voice.

The tense moment breaks and Mom goes to find the wine. But Iris is paying attention now, with all that intent she uses that serves her on the field. Her mother’s gait isn’t fluid enough. Something is wrong. Iris follows her into the kitchen. “You’re hurt.”

Glasses clink as Mom’s hands stop on them. The boxed wine sits on the counter, and Mom looks at it rather than Iris. “I suppose Cor will tell you if I don’t,” her voice tinged with regret, but likely, it’s regret at being found out—not for keeping the secret.

“You told Cor, and not us? What the hell happened?”

“Now, darling, I’d like you to take a deep breath. On second thought, take ten. Count them out. I’ll pour the wine, and we can discuss this over drinks like civilized people.” So dismissive.

Iris takes a deep breath to keep herself from snapping that the boxed wine crap was what Mom used to water her plants with before the Night.

Mom lounges on the lumpy couch in the living room, and Iris settles beside her, tension an ache she can’t shake. Both have gleaming cups of wine.  “Are you okay?” Iris says, before taking a sip. 

The red wine is bitter, but okay. She’s definitely had worse wine.

“I’m fine, dear. It was a scratch, truly, and we applied potion. The Oracle himself came to ensure I didn’t need further healing. Ravus does fret so. A sweet boy, beneath his bluster,” her mother daintily sips at her wine. “Don’t panic, but there was a small assassination attempt. The perpetrator has been apprehended.”

Iris clenches her teeth to keep from yelling. Breathes. Once and then twice. Before she says, so so evenly, “Full story, Mom. What exactly happened?”

“It was here in the apartment. I was working at my desk when I heard the door open. I presumed, foolishly, that it was your brother. I’d been expecting a delivery from him. I didn’t think much of it—until the dagger sank into my side.”

Iris’s eyes snap shut. She is careful not to shatter another mug. Her hands shake with the effort. 

They could have lost her. They could have lost her, and all because she refused to be ruled by fear. Refused to lock her doors. Refused any sort of protection, because she ‘will not be complicit in her own terror’. Reckless. So reckless. And she’d nearly— _died_.

“I must have cried out, because Cor came for me. Now, please imagine:Cor emerged from the shower, dripping with soap, and he summoned his katana. Darling, at the sight of him, gloriously nude and armed, the assassin panicked and flung himself from the window.”

They’re on the fourth story. That couldn’t have been an easy fall. But then, she’d have the same response at seeing a naked, armed, and angry Cor. “But you were okay? It didn’t hit anything vital?”

“He had a potion. That man is always prepared. Once I was stable, someone found Ravus and he fussed over me here until he said I could be ‘entrusted with my own health’. It was nice to have company, but he can be so dull when he’s of the mind to be. Wouldn’t let me smoke or drink for nearly a week. Truly, it was worst than being stabbed. An old lady’s got to have her comforts, you know,” her mother says with a mischievous smile.

Still. As amusing as the story will probably be one day… now… “Why didn’t you tell me or Gladdy?”

Mom takes a thoughtful swig of wine. She peers at Iris over her glasses—the telltale sign she’s about to say something Iris is going to hate. “Darling, given what you do... Well. I wasn’t about to be that fatal distraction. Better to wait until you were safe at home to—”

“Safe at home? You were stabbed here.” Biting, sharp, that blossom of anger at her motherthat she thought she’d stopped cultivating.

“Whatever your feelings on the matter, we can agree, I’m certain, that the threat from within does not trump that from without,” color has risen in her mother’s cheeks, and her voice is low and cool. 

Iris isn’t so sure that’s true—a threat from within can kill you faster, before you know you’re being killed. Everyone is always looking for danger from the outside… but inside? Yeah. Iris knows she’d rather fight daemons any day. Still, she’s tired of fighting with her mom.

“Okay. Okay. I get it. But Mom, you and Cor seriously can’t keep this kind of thing from us. We’re not kids anymore, and we’re supposed to be working together. All of us. One people, remember?” She puts a hand on her mom’s shoulder and squeezes. “Together, Mom. You’re not alone.”

Her mom bows her head and is still and silent for a long time. She places her hand over Iris’s. “You’re right. If I am to unite this City and all its people, it will not be pushing others away. Shall you show me your wings now, darling? Will you tell me where you’ve flown?”

“Show you mine if you show me yours.”

Scars come part and parcel with the Amicitia lifestyle, but it’s never been Mom before. Never been Mom on the Front. She’s not a Shield. An Amicitia by a marriage she didn’t choose. Mother by contract rather than choice. And yet all of it—she wears with class. Impeccable. Sure, she didn’t and doesn’t do everything right, especially in the motherhood department, but Iris finds it easier and easier to forgive her. Maybe that’s the whole growing up thing. Or maybe it’s the whole apocalypse thing.

Her mother chuckles. “You remind me so much of your father. Stubborn asses, the lot of you.”

But she lifts the silky hem of her blouse—at her side, a red and shiny scar, still fresh. How she keeps herself from scratching at it (which Iris can never stop herself from doing), Iris can’t guess. It’s long, starting from below her ribs and curving down her side to her hip. Obviously not a very good assassin, but any knife wound is dangerous. “I was thinking,” says Mom delicately, dropping her shirt. “That I might decorate it with a tattoo. Perhaps of a black rose.”

For their father. That prickly rose. Iris shuts her eyes. “That’d be nice. I know a couple artists, if you want me to get in contact with them.”

“Please do.”

Iris is used to the separation. Mom married into the family, but held herself apart—proudly Altissian, proudly a diplomat, and proudly unmarked. Then, it’s typically the Shields who have been tattooed, but some of those who married in—they didn’t get birds or wings, but used the royal black for other images. The Amicitia crest. Flowers. This is—one of the only times Mom’s adopted traditions from the Amicitia family. Iris’s throat closes up. 

“What about the Tidemother?” she asks, thickly.

Her mother clasps the bright pendant of the deity she wears. “Perhaps. ’Tis a lovely idea, darling. Now then. Show me.”

So Iris shrugs down her top, so that Mom can see her shoulders. The dark feathers, intricately detailed, fanned out over her shoulders and back like wings. They’re not as big as Gladio’s, not as simple as Dad’s. They’re ornate and beautiful, but they’re her wings—not connected to a bird. All her. The flight is hers. 

“Lovely,” her mother breathes. “Your father… would be proud. Mother knows, Cor and I are.” She brushes Iris’s cropped hair from her neck.

“Dad’d be proud of you, too, y’know.” Iris can’t turn to look at Mom.

Mom just laughs softly. “Then I must ensure I honor his memory. There is yet so much to do. Speaking of, darling… Since you’re here…”

 

Trust Mom to rope her into reading Ravus’s chicken-scratched reports. But she doesn’t mind, so long as the wine keeps flowing and Mom keeps breathing. They’ve all got to work together, now. (And it’s funny, that it took the apocalypse to make her close with her mother, but it’s something positive. Something good. So she’ll take what she can get.)

Mom doesn’t even complain when Iris locks the door. She leans against her mother, careful not to put any weight on her injury, and forces herself to accept the safety. The safety of family.


End file.
